President Rodrigo Duterte's niece, Maria Fema Duterte on Thursday revealed the major reason why Senator Alan Cayetano, despite his close ties with the President denied Envirnment Secretary Gins Lopez of her post: she could have protected a Liberal Party funder who owned a mining company.

Dutere said that Arne Gogo, a public relations and marketing professional told her that Cayetano was suspicious as to why Lopez retained the mining operations of Eric Gutierrez in Agusan.

Gutierrez is one of the biggest campaign contributors of Mar Roxas, and is facing controversies of illegal mining in Mindanao.

"Now I know, why Alan Peter Cayetano kept on asking Lopez on how the judgment was made among those mining companies who passed and failed in the audit. The thing is, Lopez retained the operation of the mining of the Gutierrez’s in Agusan in which we all know, one of the biggest campaign contributors of Mar Roxas,” she quoted Gogo as saying.

"Well they say that the Lopez’ and the Gutierrez’ are close. And Digong just learned about this, lately. So it was a unanimous decision to the allies of the President to vote NO, whom we expected to back up Lopez from the start. The like of Pimentel, Cayetano, Lacson and Zubiri and all of the 12 member Congressmen of the C.A, really think that the best option they had is to let Lopez go,” he added,

This could also be the reason why Liberal Party senators supported Lopez, according to Gogo. They could all benefit from her.

Radio broadcaster Erwin Tulfo reportedly said the same thing to explain why LP members supported Lopez.

In a text message, Senator Panfilo Lacson also said that he didn’t supported the appointment of Gina Lopez because of “authoritarian tendencies.”

He added that Lopez “admittedly arrogated unto herself the authority which is not prescribed under the existing laws of the land,” that could made her “potentially dangerous as a department head.

President Duterte recently expressed his regret at the incident but said that this is a democracy and he can't control everything.